The Los Angeles Lakers wanted former point guard Steve Nash to stay, but when they offered him a chance to be part of the coaching staff, it was too late as he was already with defending National Basketball Association (NBA) champions the Golden State Warriors.
Golden State hired Nash, who was a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), as a part-time player development consultant for the upcoming 2015–16 season.
Nash joining the Warriors reunites him with the team's head coach Steve Kerr, development coach Bruce Fraser, and president Rick Welts whom he had worked with in his time playing for the Phoenix Suns and are some of his closest friends in the league.
But along with the Warriors, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports said in his tweet that the Lakers and the Suns also tried to hire Nash as a consultant.
Before joining the Warriors, Nash spent his last playing years with the Lakers; but injuries limited his participation in on-court action. Instead, he helped in developing the team's young guards especially Jordan Clarkson.
Under Nash's tutelage, Clarkson improved and was rewarded with All-Rookie First Team honors.
In Spears' tweet, he said that before joining the Warriors, Nash was offered the job by his former teams but the eight-time All-Star corrected the statement by replying, "@SpearsNBAYahoo after I'd already agreed with the Warriors."
Nash's work with Clarkson was expected to make him stay with the Lakers to continue mentoring the second-year guard and 2015 number one pick point guard D'Angelo Russell.
Clarkson and Russell are billed as the future of the franchise and having Nash to teach them would have been huge for Los Angeles.
But the 41-year-old NBA veteran left the Lakers to be in Golden State where he will have a chance to work with some of the greatest guards in the league today like 2015 MVP Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
